Introducing a digital tool in your team

What it is

Introducing a tool means making a digital tool a fixed part of how your team works. For example, a neighbourhood team starts video calling with clients, or a team of support workers uses an app in which clients can see their daily plan.

Buying or downloading the tool is usually the easiest part. Most of the work is in making agreements, explaining, practising and adjusting. That is why introducing a tool well also involves requirements and wishes, risks, training, testing and maintenance.

You start with what clients and the team need. Then you start small, solve the problems and only expand after that. Along the way, you keep checking what it achieves, and you make sure the new way of working gets a fixed place in the team’s agreements.

Why it matters

Whether a tool achieves anything depends largely on how you introduce it. A tool that works well in one organisation will not necessarily do so in another. The difference lies in the circumstances: is there support, does someone take care of the technology, and do colleagues feel ownership?

Not everyone in your team is equally skilled with digital tools. Some care staff call themselves digital beginners, and there may be more of them, because not everyone finds it easy to say that something digital isn’t working for them. In social work there is another barrier: not all social workers are convinced of digital help, and the workload leaves little time to learn it. If a tool becomes something you do on the side, it is less likely to succeed.

Clients must be able to take part. The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (Inspectie Gezondheidszorg en Jeugd, IGJ) expects healthcare and youth care organisations to involve clients in choices about digital care and in the evaluation. For clients who can’t take part digitally, help without a screen must remain possible: see What is digital inclusion?.

How to do it

1. Describe the problem. What is not going well now, for clients and for the team? Make it as concrete as possible, for example: “Clients cancel appointments because the journey to the community centre is too much for them.” Don’t write down a tool yet: you choose that in step 3.

2. Get support from management. Introducing a tool takes time and money, for explaining, practising and meeting. Ask your manager for that room. Agree who is responsible for what: who decides, who takes care of the technology and who helps colleagues. Healthcare and youth care organisations should have a fixed way of working for buying and introducing digital tools, which says who takes part in each phase. Make sure it doesn’t have to be squeezed in between other work. It can help if someone from management is the project sponsor: that gives support, and makes decisions about money easier.

3. Choose together. Involve clients and colleagues in the choice. Without working together with clients and the people close to them, such as family, it is hard to introduce a tool for good. Use the steps from Choosing a digital tool for your client. Also ask organisations that already use the tool about their experience. That way, you know better what you are buying and why.

4. Sort out privacy beforehand. Will client data go into the tool? Then ask the data protection officer (in Dutch: functionaris gegevensbescherming, FG) for advice before you start. Does your organisation not have an FG? Then ask who handles privacy where you work. If the maker works with that data on behalf of your organisation, you need a data processing agreement. Is the privacy risk high? Then your organisation must carry out a privacy assessment: a DPIA (data protection impact assessment). Your organisation must always ask the FG for advice when doing this. You can read what a data processing agreement and a DPIA are in The AVG (GDPR) in care and support.

5. See who needs what kind of explanation. There are four digitypes: the ‘analogue idealist’, the ‘hesitant technology user’, the ‘digitally skilled professional’ and the ‘digital enthusiast’. This is not only about skill, but also about knowledge, motivation, self-image and attitude. With the self-scan from Vilans (a Dutch knowledge centre for long-term care), everyone can see which type they are.

   Each type needs something different. An analogue idealist is often ashamed of what they can’t do, so give them room to say so, and share news in person or on paper, not only by email. A hesitant technology user learns in small steps, with a manual that goes step by step. And a digitally skilled colleague also wants to know why something works the way it does.

6. Start with a small trial. First try the tool with a few colleagues and clients, for a fixed period. Agree in advance what the trial should achieve. Don’t only let enthusiastic colleagues take part, because then the trial says little about the rest of the team.

   Do you first want to find out something small, such as whether it works with the computers you have? Then let a team of people with different tasks try it out briefly, for example for a week. That way, before the real trial, you find out whether the tool fits your technology, whether it is affordable and who it adds something for. This is called meaningful trying out (zinvol uitproberen).

7. Learn it side by side. A course in a classroom often works less well for colleagues who feel unsure about digital things. It works better when an experienced colleague sits next to them and explains, while the other person uses the buttons themselves. The experienced colleague does not touch the keyboard, because whoever takes over the task keeps the other person dependent. A step-by-step guide with screenshots next to the computer also helps.

8. Appoint a point of contact. A colleague who knows the tool well answers questions and helps others get started. Such a person is called an ambassador: they get colleagues involved and ask them what could be better. Also show what it achieves, because positive stories and concrete examples from colleagues win others over more quickly.

9. Evaluate with the team and clients. After the trial, look back together. Does it help clients? What does it cost the team? What needs to change? Give colleagues room to say what isn’t working well too, and then adjust it. Ask clients themselves about their experience, for example at the end of a conversation. Ask them to give a score from 0 to 10 and ask follow-up questions.

10. Decide and record it. Are you carrying on? Then record in working agreements how the team uses the tool. Make sure from the start of the trial that there will be money afterwards to carry on. In social work this matters even more, because there is no fixed budget for innovation from the government, municipalities or health insurers.

    Also make sure colleagues get training before they start using the tool, including new colleagues and also after an important change. Are you stopping? Then write down what you learned, so you can take those lessons with you next time.

Choices you make

• Starting small or big. A small trial is easy to adjust, but says less about the whole team. A larger trial says more, but takes more time and explanation, and a mistake then affects more clients.
• Something you already have or something new. For a tool your organisation already uses, there are often already agreements about privacy and management. A new tool may fit better, but needs more work in advance.
• Everyone or whoever wants to. Clients choose for themselves whether they take part. For the team, it is a choice you make together: will everyone use it, or only those it suits? Record that choice, so nobody has to guess.

Points to watch

• Allow time. A new way of working is not done in a few weeks. It can take more than a year.
• Ask colleagues what they need. People who introduce a tool are often digital enthusiasts themselves. Because of that, they are less likely to see which colleagues need more help.
• Explain updates. A new version can annoy colleagues, just when they had got the hang of the old one. So tell them what the update fixes or improves.
• Agree what you do if it doesn’t work. If video calling fails, everyone must know what happens next, for example that you simply phone.
• Report it when something goes wrong. Does someone send a client’s data to the wrong person? That may be a data breach. Report it straight away within your organisation.

Questions

How long should a trial last? There is no fixed rule for this. Choose a period in which the tool can really be used, for example six weeks, and agree in advance when you will look back. The whole introduction does take longer than the trial.

A colleague doesn’t want to take part. What now? First ask why. Sometimes there is shame behind it. Then start with what that colleague most needs for their work, and show what they can already do, for example with their own phone. It also helps if a colleague with the same doubts tells how it worked out in the end.

Find out more

• Choosing a digital tool for your client: the questions you ask before you choose.
• Video calling with clients: if you are going to start video calling.
• The privacy checklist for an app: points to tick off for the trial.
• Designing a digital tool together with clients: if you want to involve clients from the start.
• With the Tool finder, three short questions show you which tools fit your question.
• Is there nothing yet that fits what you need? Then read what we do in custom work.